What Will Doomers Do When their Dooms Fail to Happen?

Many doomers -- particularly the thought-leaders of doom movements -- can be quite versatile and resourceful in the face of their many failed predictions. For those who make a living from doom, it helps to not only be clever, but to have an eye for the gullible rube, or sucker. Here is how doomer Paul Ehrlich has made a lucrative life from predicting countless dooms which never came to pass:

Ehrlich came to prominence in 1968 with the publication of his environmental blockbusterThe Population Bomb. The book’s central Malthusian thesis is that a growing population is unsustainable in a world of dwindling finite resources. As Malthus’ scenario failed to materialize, so too Ehrlich’s apocalyptic vision of hungry and dead bodies on the streets in the 1970s proved a total fiction. Not that this has deterred Ehrlich. He has continued to make a healthy living from a litany of population predictions – not one of which has come to pass.

The truth is that Ehrlich is the greatest failed prophet of our age. Yet amazingly, not only does he continue to collect his university stipend and pick up lucrative public appearance and book deals, for all his blatant failures, is still feted by the media. Take the journalistic drivel with which John Vidal’s Guardian article began at the end of April. Vidal’s interview announces Ehrlich as “the world’s most renowned population analyst”. So what track record of predictive success to date warrants such approbation? Ehrlich’s prophecies include:

That the battle to feed humanity was over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people, including Americans, were going to starve to death. (Of course, if eco-warriors butted out, GM foods could easily eradicate global hunger within a decade. But, in any event, food production is running well in excess of global population growth. To top it all, the obesity epidemic currently kills hundreds of thousands every year.)

England would not exist in the year 2000 (I just looked out of the window. It’s still here.)

“Smog disasters” would kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles in 1973.(Not only did it not happen, both cities continue to have the best air quality they have had in decades.)

In 1976, “before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity...in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.” (Heard of the shale gas and oil revolutions that are set to last for hundreds of years and, beyond that, centuries of methane hydrates?)

In an Atlantic article in the late 1990s Ehrlich maintained that anyone who believed technology would provide the answers to the problem of scarcity was either a liar or a fool. (Heard of the technique of ‘hydraulic fracturing’ that has set in motion the energy game-changing shale revolution – not to mention deepwater reserves – facilitating century’s more of both gas and oil and cutting US gas prices by a quarter?)

In 1972 Ehrlich suggested adding a forced sterilization agent to “staple food” and to the water supply. (Shades of the SF movie Soylent Green? Would you trust any government who effectively ‘poisoned’ the food and water supply as part of a program of ‘forced sterilization’?)

All of Ehrlich’s solutions to his predictions are, of course, rooted in the need to overthrow democracy with a world government controlling and enforcing a global program of distribution of food and energy consumption. Ah yes, world domination – and a final solution. And if the very thought of this 1984-style one world government turns your liberty-loving stomach, consider what Ehrlich-esque policies have already achieved. In the 1950s the UN imposed a global ban on the use of DDT after environmentalists complained a few birds were accidently killed by DDT (actually through slight over-use of the chemical). DDT was singularly responsible for eradicating the world’s single greatest killer: malaria. As a direct result of the ban by the EPA in 1972, it is estimated that around a million people a year in sub-Saharan Africa alone die from the disease. The “solutions” of environmentalist visionaries should come with a global health warning attached.

No wonder Ehrlich has variously been referred to as “worse than Hitler” and “the Bernie Madoff of science”. To be fair, Ehrlich’s renewed concerns articulated in Vidal’s Guardian interview, about how the earth’s resources can sustain the 9 billion people predicted for 2050, was actually triggered by a new report from the Johnny-come-lately prophets-of-gloom at the Royal Society. Remember when the RS was the doyen of Newtonian empiricist real science? Not anymore. In a desperate bid to become appear “relevant” and justify its increasingly publicly-funded soaring price tag, the RS leadership is increasingly eschewing real science for speculative science.

Published in April 2012, the key recommendations of the Royal Society’s People and the Planet are thoroughly Malthusian. Like Ehrlich, the Royal Socity report is concerned about the Earth’s finite resources failing to keep up with population growth. It demands that developed and emerging economies (that’s everyone) “stabilise” and “reduce material consumption”. And, chiefly, that “reproductive health and voluntary family planning programmes urgently require political leadership” to cut “fertility rates”. Pretty much your standard environmental doom and gloom – and based on an erroneous understanding of “finite resources”. As I have written elsewhere, the RS is developing a culture of anti-science by exchanging its empiricist soul for a mess of prophetic theory.

...No one would spend time publicly expounding preposterous prophetic theories that keep failing if there wasn’t a public appetite for them – and if there weren’t mega-bucks to be made in the speculative ‘futures’ market. Public speaking engagements, book tours, disaster movies, headline-grabbing articles majoring on apocalyptic and sensationalism and warnings are all money-spinning themes. Then there are the rewards of academia. In 1990 alone, even as the failed prophecies racked up, Ehrlich pocketed a cool $345,000 through winning the MacArthur Foundations’ “genius award” and another $60,000 being one half of an award from the Swedish Royal Academy of Science. “Genius” then, we must concede. Any butterfly specialist – which is what Ehrlich is – that can screw $400,000+ out of two international science academies must have some chutzpah. _GWPF

There is a sucker born every minute. Fortunately for purveyors of doom, many of these cognitive newborns are suckers for stories of doom. From carbon hysteria to resource depletion to overpopulation to global death from pollution, many people just want to see civilisation collapse, or to see their fellow man suffer.

The purveyors of doom, such as Ehrlich, are happy to find as many suckers as they can -- individuals or institutions. Stories of doom are easy to spin -- most of them are just recycled tales of earlier failed predictions, after all. They are making good livings from selling doom vomit, in other words. What a pleasant thought.

After Doomsday: Powering Your Survival Bunker

This satirical article was previously posted on Al Fin Potpourri blog:

After the Apocalypse
After the doomsday bell tolls, you will want to have a safe hideaway, packed with your favourite foods, beverages, people, and prescription drugs. But no matter how safely your bunker is designed, you cannot survive long without a source of heating and electrical power.

Issues of energy density dictate the need for a nuclear power and heat source -- either fission or fusion. The choice seems to come down to either a small modular nuclear fission reactor -- such as the NuScale or Wilcox and Babcock models, vs one of the new scalable fusion reactor models. The Lawrenceville Plasma Physics focus fusion device pictured below, appears to be the leader of the pack in terms of timeline for proof of concept, prototype, commercial demo, and mass production.

All images below taken from Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc (PDF) (via) NBF

Five megawatts baseload power should be enough to supply the power and heat needs of most medium-sized doomsday communities. When living in an underground environment, it is easy to underestimate needs for space lighting and grow-lighting, as well as power for supplying pumps, compressors, blowers, fans, filtration devices, and various electronic devices.

The diagram above attempts to illustrate energy flows and losses in the focus fusion system. Operation of the reactor will be highly automated, but a certain amount of oversight will be necessary, to assure smooth function and to limit any need for routine maintenance shutdown.

Baseload power generation means that the reactor produces 5 MW at all times. Any heat and power produced above the needs of the doomsday community will converted as needed, and routed to storage or to a sink. Since the reactor utilises hydrogen and boron as fuel, a significant amount of excess power will be used to maintain hydrogen stores. The hydrogen can be used as fuel in either the focus fusion reactor, or in backup fuel cell CHP generators.

The timeline for production of the LPP focus fusion reactors is particularly optimistic, with estimates for mass production as early as 2016.

Keep in mind that US federal and state regulators are unlikely to approve these devices for sale in the US anytime within the next decade. This means that any US citizen wishing to use these reactors as backup power supplies for their home, seastead, polar outpost, or doomsday bunker, will either need to locate outside the US, or will need to find extra-legal ways of installing their nuclear fusion (or SMR fission) reactors within the borders of the US.

In the event of doomsday, it is expected that nuclear enforcement by US federal or state officials will be suspended for a number of years. In such a case, issues of survival are likely to be paramount, over issues of bureaucratic red tape.

Renewable Diesel and Power from Sweet Sorghum

Producers of advanced biofuels and high value products from biomass and engineered crops and microbes, are still out there working hard in labs around the world. The global bonanza of cheap shale gas may postpone the commercial debut of many of these products, processes, and systems, for a decade or more. But that will give these labs and field scientists more time to perfect their systems. In fact, there are many ways in which cheap methane could be a boon to the production of high value chemicals and fuels. And it is undeniable that high value bio-products can be grown and produced in almost any terrestrial location -- often in places far from hydrocarbon deposits or depots.

The following report demonstrates that top quality scientists are continuing to pursue viable paths to the production of renewable fuels, chemicals, polymers, lubricants, and other high value products.

GCC Amyris Scientists from Amyris and Ceres are presenting new findings at a biotechnology conference in New Orleans on the production of renewable diesel and power from sweet sorghum. Here's more:

The pilot-scale project use both free (soluble) sugars and biomass (cellulosic) sugars from Ceres’ sweet sorghum hybrids grown in Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana and Tennessee. To process the soluble sugars that accumulate in the plants, the sorghum juice was first extracted from the stems and concentrated into sugar syrup by Ceres. The syrup was then processed by Amyris at its California pilot facility using its proprietary yeast fermentation system that converts plant sugars into its trademarked product, Biofene, a renewable hydrocarbon commonly known as farnesene....

The inedible plant fibers of the sweet sorghum provided an additional source of cellulosic sugars. The DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), at its Colorado pilot-scale biochemical conversion facility, converted the biomass from Ceres’ hybrids into cellulosic sugars, which Amyris subsequently fermented into renewable farnesene.

Farnesene is a 15-carbon isoprenoid hydrocarbon molecule that forms the basis for a wide range of products varying from specialty chemical applications to transportation fuels such as diesel. When used as a fuel precursor, farnesene can be hydrogenated to farnesane, which has a high cetane number (58). Amyris modifies farnesene to become renewable diesel.

Life-cycle analysis of Amyris Diesel production from sweet sorghum indicates Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reductions of greater than 80%.

Secondary products from the biorefinery project include lubricants, polymers and other petrochemical substitutes. These secondary products are derived from the same C15 fermentation intermediate (farnesene) as Amyris Renewable Diesel, providing opportunities to de-risk commercial production. _GCC

Sierra Club Working with Vladimir Putin to Shut Down Gazprom Competition?

 Sierra Club Aims to Shut Down North American Natural Gas Bonanza

Russia's Putin fears competition from shale gas. And suddenly, marching in lock-step with Russian propaganda efforts to block development of massive global shale gas -- Gazprom's biggest threat -- big-money western green organisations are stepping up their anti-gas rhetoric.

“As we push to retire coal plants, we’re going to work to make sure we’re not simultaneously switching to natural-gas infrastructure,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune told National Journal in an interview on Wednesday. “And we’re going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can.”

...Vast reserves of shale natural gas discovered in recent years have promised the country decades of a domestic energy supply that many experts—along with President Obama—consider a cleaner fossil-fuel alternative to coal and oil. Natural gas burns with 50 percent fewer emissions than coal and is 20 to 30 percent cleaner than oil.

...The Sierra Club had once embraced natural gas as a temporary, cleaner bridge fuel to renewable energy. Other environmental organizations also did, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund.

But the Sierra Club, more than the other two influential organizations, has become increasingly outspoken against natural gas in the past year or two, especially since Brune took over as executive director from Carl Pope, who stepped down in 2010 after 18 years in the post.

Brune said his group is doubling down on its efforts against gas in reaction to proposals to export natural gas and the increasing shift from coal to gas in the electricity sector. That’s not all that’s changed in the past two years: The collapse of climate-change legislation and near record-low natural-gas prices have created a market landscape where natural gas is poised to win out over renewables and nuclear power. _National Journal

It will take time to follow the money connections between the Sierra Club's Brune and other functionaries, and the vested interests who have the most to lose from the global boom in unconventional natural gas. Corruption in big money organisations such as the Sierra Club or the WWF would be nothing new.

Lefty-Luddite green dieoff.orgy groups want to reduce the human population of Earth by 90% to 95%. Energy starvation of the advanced nations is one approach to achieving this die-off. If the industries and economies of advanced nations are squeezed and starved of energy, they will not be able to provide ample food, medicine, or infrastructure support to their own populations. But even worse in terms of human suffering, is what will happen in the third world, if the first world can no longer provide aid and support. The death toll in primitive lands -- as they revert to a pre-industrial state -- will be tremendous.

This is something that the Sierra Club, WWF, VHEMT.org, etc are counting on and working toward. It is up to voters and concerned citizens in the first world to see that their own governments are not unduly influenced by these doom seeking groups.

Natural Gas Gives Humans Time to Move to Nuclear

The explosion in the available natural gas resource -- from the shale gas bonanza to the coming gas hydrates boom -- should reassure us that we have time to move to advanced nuclear fission, and eventually fusion. For the next few decades, it is likely that natural gas -- particularly LNG and GTL -- will assume a rapidly growing role in the global energy trade.

New giant gas fields have been discovered in such previously unpromising places as the Mediterranean off Israel’s shores and deep Atlantic waters offshore near Brazil. There are extensive deposits of gas-bearing shales in Europe (particularly in Poland) and enormous resources in Asia. Recent reductions in the cost of gas liquefaction coupled with increased sizes of LNG tankers (they now rival the size of ships carrying crude oil) made LNG into a trade equivalent of oil: It can now be transported to consumers on any continent, bought without restrictive long-term contracts, and delivered at increasingly affordable prices. The totals speak for themselves: Global LNG trade rose roughly eightfold between 1980 and 2010, and it now accounts for 30 percent of the worldwide natural gas trade.

...Before the end of 2005, the U.S. price of natural gas rose above $15/1,000 cubic feet, nearly 12 times the all-time low reached in 1995. Production was down by about 8 percent compared to 2001, news reports speculated about supply shortages, and gas companies were gearing for expanded imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from overseas. Six years later, by the second week of April 2012, the market price of U.S. natural gas fell to less than $2/1,000 cubic feet (to levels not seen since January 2002), nationwide gas extraction in 2011 was nearly 12 percent above the 2009 level, and record production was expected in 2012, when all storages would be filled to capacity. No wonder that gas companies are now planning to export LNG, and that new drilling projects have been shelved in the anticipation of gas glut.

...Little has to be said about high oil prices (the price spread between liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons has reached an unprecedented level), but the conversion efficiencies achievable by furnaces and turbines burning natural gas are not sufficiently appreciated. New, super-efficient household gas furnaces convert up to 97 percent of the fuel into heat; combined-cycle generation (using the waste heat from a gas turbine to raise steam and generate more electricity in an associated steam turbine) now produces electricity with 60 percent efficiency (and 70 percent will be possible in the future).

This amazingly abrupt change of gas fortunes has been due to the rising production of shale gas. _Vaclav Smil

But it is not just shale gas that will drive this multi-decadal boom in the importance of natural gas. Brian Westenhaus expands on recent coverage of the impending rise of gas hydrates. Gas hydrates represent more hydrocarban than all the other hydrocarbon resources combined. A recent US DOE announcement revealed that US and Japanese researchers had succeeded in finding a safe and viable means of tapping into the vast global gas hydrate deposits.

As gas supplies expand, the global trade of LNG will continue to rise. But even more important than the rise of the LNG trade, improved methods of utilising gas in producing electricity, liquid fuels, high value chemicals, polymers, lubricants, and more, point to at least a few decades of relative abundance of energy and materials that the doomers said could never be.

And even more importantly, the coming multi-decadal respite from the long-predicted energy scarcity will allow humans time enough to develop safer, cheaper, more reliable, and more efficient scalable nuclear power plants. Fission will become a better method of producing power and process heat. Next will come fusion. After that, we are likely to discover that we do not understand physics or the universe nearly as well as we had thought.

By then, we should be ready to begin to learn.

A Power Grid Control Center

This room may look unfamiliar, but it is one of the most 
important places in your life. Without it, you could not count on your house being warm and bright, your food staying safe in the fridge, or your ability to charge your iPad or cell phone. Behind the modern world is a vast wired network transmitting electricity to consumers. We call it the grid... _Discover

Grid Control Center ERC Texas Balancing power production and power consumption is a difficult, never-ending task, made all the more difficult by green ideologues who have worked their way into positions of power and policy influence. Here is the way one author breaks down the job of a grid control center:

1. A River Runs Through It

Power plants generate electricity, but they do not create anything from scratch. Instead, generators take electrons, which normally orbit the nucleus of an atom, and force them to move independently through the grid’s closed path. When too many electrons build up or their numbers in the system (monitored here) fall too low, you get a total loss of power: a blackout.

2. Needed: Grid Renovation
Before we can add more renewable energy to the Texas grid, represented above, we must renovate its aging infrastructure. One suggested boost is a giant storage battery to make up any shortfalls in power. Another is improving the distribution system so electricity can flow not just to but from consumers, wherever it is needed most.

3. Hands on Deck 

Human controllers at right and above can override computers if power is at risk. When generators fail, as they did last winter in Texas, controllers lean on “demand-response customers”—large electricity users, like factories, that are paid to be on call, ready to use a little less or even shut everything off at a moment’s notice.

4. Renewable Risk

Our current...grid evolved to work with steady [reliable] energy sources like natural gas and coal. [Unreliable] Wind and solar energy, which vary with outside conditions like weather (indicated here) and time of day, are so variable they can destabilize the current grid if they make up more than 20 to 30 percent of the supply.

5. Balance of Power

To avoid blackouts, supply and demand must be almost perfectly balanced, a task given to controllers monitoring the screens. First they make daily forecasts of the next day’s electric demand and supply down to every five minutes. Then if they turn out to be slightly off, controllers tweak the balance by activating backup generators or asking some consumers to use less. _Discover

Depending on unreliable renewables such as big wind or big solar for more than about 10% of a grid's supply is begging for trouble. Not only does it make the work of grid controllers much more difficult, but it also drives up costs of compensatory backup systems -- and forces costs of maintenance for those long-suffering backup systems through the roof.

To state that green ideologues have neither the knowledge nor the wisdom to make power grid policy would be to understate the obvious by orders of magnitude. But when voters elect incompetent clown ideologues such as the current US president -- who appoints incompetent ideologues to important policy-making and regulatory positions in the EPA, DOI, DOE, DOJ, etc -- it is clear that majority rule suffers from at least a few weaknesses.

Inevitably, the people suffer.

Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

Important Key to Unlocking Vast Gas Hydrate Resource Announced by US DOE

Methane hydrates represent the largest resource of hydrocarbons in the planetary crust. Up until now, humans had not devised a good way to tap into this immense energy wealth. But a report from the DOE today may point the way to a new era in abundant energy for human societies:

May 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in research into tapping a possibly vast fuel resource that could eventually bolster already massive U.S. natural gas reserves.

By injecting a mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen into a methane hydrate formation on Alaska's North Slope, the department was able to produce a steady flow of natural gas in the first field test of this method. The test was done from mid-February to about mid-April this year

"While this is just the beginning, this research could potentially yield significant new supplies of natural gas," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.

The department, which partnered with ConocoPhillips and Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp for the test, said it will offer $6.5 million this year for further research on tapping methane hydrates, and will request an additional $5 million for research next year.

Gerald Holder, dean of the engineering program at University of Pittsburgh and who has worked with the DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory on the hydrate issue, said before this announcement he had been skeptical about what researchers would be able to accomplish. He said the main problem until now was finding a way to extract natural gas from solid hydrates without adding a whole lot of steps that made the process too expensive, so the success of this new test is significant. "It makes the possibility of recovering methane from hydrates much more likely," Holder said. _Reuters

While it is true that experts are probably understating the actual resource of gas hydrates by a significant factor, the same could be said for estimates of crude oil, coal, natural gas, bitumen, and kerogen resources.

But today's announcement should initiate renewed research in labs around the world, toward devising more efficient and economical ways of extracting gas hydrates from the enormous, "quasi-renewable" resource.

Why do we say that gas hydrates are quasi-renewable sources of energy? If you do not understand that, then you have not been paying attention. Try a little harder, please.

US Natural Gas: $10 a Barrel Oil Equivalence Price

Oil and natural gas used to be joined at the hip, and in the minds of many people they still are, even though the days when most US natural gas was a direct or indirect byproduct of oil production--either produced with oil or found by accident when a company was drilling for oil--are long past. The vast majority of our gas comes from dedicated gas wells in fields that were explored because of their gas potential, with shale gas and other so-called "tight gas" increasingly dominating output. The widely discussed shale gas revolution is the main reason natural gas is so cheap today, instead of costing over $10 per MMBTU as it would if shale gas hadn't happened and the industry's expectations about increasing LNG imports had materialized instead. _Geoffrey Styles

US natural gas production -- and thus gas prices relative to oil prices -- continue to be astoundingly low. $10 per barrel oil equivalent price compared to $110 a barrel for crude oil, puts natural gas at a large competitive advantage for those who are able to substitute natural gas for oil.

Already utilities in the US are making large investments to substitute natural gas electrical generating plants in place of coal power plants. Chemical companies are beginning to build expensive ethane to ethylene plants in multiple US locations, for the substitution of natural gas in place of oil in production of chemicals and polymers. Multiple oil and energy companies are making plans to build very expensive natural gas to liquid fuels (GTL) plants in Louisiana and Texas. And manufacturers who require cheap, high quality process heat, are locating in and expanding in parts of the US and Canada with plentiful, cheap natural gas. Low gas prices have serious consequences for multiple industries.

The only reason that additional demand from utilities, petrochemicals, transportation, and exports hasn't already sopped up the gas surplus and boosted prices is that all of these developments involve time lags of their own. It will take time to build the new ethylene crackers announced by Shell and Dow Chemical. Natural gas power plants have already ramped up output and seized market share from coal, but bigger shifts will require more gas turbines. Converting long-haul trucking to natural gas requires expensive modifications to trucks and new refueling infrastructure. Meanwhile the first liquefied natural gas export terminal just received the go-ahead from FERC. Yet while none of these things can happen overnight, and there isn't enough gas to push them all to their maximum potential in any case, they are all being propelled by the enormous driving force of natural gas at the oil equivalent of $12-20/bbl in a $100-per-barrel world. The developers of renewable energy technology must also figure out how to compete with that, if they're going to prosper without fiscally unsustainable subsidies.

As scaled-back drilling and new demand mop up the current gas glut, only one thing can happen to prices. The $64,000 question is how high they could rise and still keep the demand expansion going. A return to $10 natural gas would halt the shift from coal to gas and stop the penetration of gas in transportation in its tracks, but it would also unleash an even larger wave of new production. Mr. McClendon's latest guess for the medium-term price is between $3 and $5, and that sounds reasonable. Even at the latter the BTUs in gas would still cost just $29/bbl. We won't see oil at that price any time soon, so gas doesn't need to remain at $2 to create a world-beating energy advantage for the US. If natural gas can fulfill even a portion of the potential we see today, we will soon need to rethink most of our assumptions of energy scarcity embedded by four decades of recurring oil crises. That will be uncomfortable for some people. _Geoffrey Styles

Only the eco-fascists within Obama's administration could shut down this energy and economic boom. And they would certainly like to. But they will have to wait at least until after the next national elections, in November. And if congressional Democrats have any sense of self-preservation, Mr. Obama may begin to face a growing rebellion within his own party, if he attempts to apply his green dieoff.orgy dreams too forcefully, should he be re-elected.

Perhaps It's EPA Officials Who Should Be Crucified

Oil and gas companies have good reason to worry about costly punitive EPA practices under the Obama administration. Their Dallas Regional Administrator, Al Armendariz, expressed this take-no-prisoners philosophy at a taped city council meeting two years ago. The strategy described was to single out an oil company accused of a rule infraction and “punish it as hard as you can” as an example to scare others into submission. He explained: “The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean.” Armendariz continued, “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they would crucify them. And then you know that the town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

...An estimated 50% of East Coast refinery capacity is predicted to shut down in June thanks to EPA regulatory restrictions on new refinery plant construction and upgrades, along with others that discourage Gulf Coast suppliers from piping gas into to this fuel-starved region. Unsurprisingly, the Energy Department warns that the resulting shortage will cause pump prices to spike, and “While the short-term effects of the idled Philadelphia-area refineries will be concentrated in the Central Atlantic, their long-term impacts will be more evenly spread throughout the entire East Coast.”

... in addition to CO2 emission restrictions, EPA’s sulfur reduction requirements could also have significant adverse impacts on refinery operations. Initial costs could reach $17 billion, with recurring costs of between $5-13 billion, translating to higher product costs of around 5-35 cents/gallon of petroleum. Such added costs could lead to a reduction of gasoline supply from U.S. refiners of up to 14%, placing domestic refineries at a competitive disadvantage with foreign refineries that are not subject to EPA rules.

Over the past 60 years, the U.S. has seen the number of refineries cut almost in half, down from 324 to 149. The last facility to be constructed, the Ashland refinery near Garyville, Louisiana, was completed in 1976. As a result, disruptions of production due to maintenance, accidents and natural disasters at one or more plants can create shortfalls and price hikes with regional and national impacts.

...Combined with a raft of new Obama administration regulatory restrictions on drilling, EPA constraints on refinery development and expansion will predictably increase our dependence upon foreign sources. Huge plants now under construction in India, Asia, and the Middle East will produce countless tanker loads of less expensive gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel…. And they won’t be worrying about environmental non-compliance penalties.

...EPA’s ultimate regulatory role and policies will be decided by a higher tribunal. That American Body Electorate must be prepared to live with its own November 6th decisions…the most important rulings of all to determine our energy future. _Forbes

Of course, US voters are not required to demonstrate any knowledge or wisdom before being allowed to vote. More and more, they are not even required to demonstrate citizenship or prove their identity.

US President Obama and his faux environmental accomplices inside and outside of the US government clearly represent a threat to the energy, industry, and private sector economy of the US. Whether American voters will recognise the threat and take the appropriate measures is far from certain.

What we are seeing in the Obama administration is the rise of eco-fascism:

...Let’s sum up for a moment: burning houses, threats to life, limb, business, destroying careers, inflammatory rhetoric, deception, lies and preventing free speech. The message from the eco-fascist Left is resolute: don’t mess with us, or else. These are not guys Joe Public would want to break bread with.

...In April the US Department of Homeland Security released its Environmental Justice Strategy. It makes provision to incorporate the notion of “environmental justice” as a “homeland security” issue. If you thought Homeland was all about keeping citizens safe from terrorists, think again. Under President Obama they are about to create local “federal law enforcement” agents empowered specifically to enforce green laws and regulations in the name of “securing the homeland”. In short, a green police force. If it can happen in the land of the free, how long before the cop green-print recycles to socialist Europe? _EnergyTribune

President Obama said in his first presidential campaign that he wanted to build a US civilian (paramilitary) force as strong and as well-financed as the US military. Perhaps that was not an empty threat, to those who fear the rise of a US KGB or a US Gestapo? And all under the guise of "homeland security???" The path Mr. Obama has chosen to achieve his long cherished goals is nothing if not serpentine.

Peak Oil, Meet Hard Facts: An Energy Primer

Images below courtesy of Hard Facts: An Energy Primer (PDF):

Hard Facts: An Energy Primer (PDF), is a free downloadable primer on the state of US energy, with some additional useful facts on global energy. Here is a quick summary of the PDF report along with a few images from the primer:

Fossil Fuel Facts

• In 2011, the United States produced 23.0 trillion cubic feet of natural gas,1 making it the world’s largest natural gas producer. 2

Observe How the Reserves Rose Significantly Over Time, Despite the Large Intervening Production Numbers

• In 2011, the United States produced 5.67 million barrels of oil, making it the world’s third largest oil producer. 3

• Proved conventional oil reserves worldwide more than doubled from 642 billion barrels in 1980 to more than 1.3 trillion barrels in 2009. 4

• The United States is home to the richest oil shale deposits in the world—estimates are there are about 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in U.S. oil shale deposits, nearly four times that of Saudi Arabia’s proved oil reserves. 5
• The United States has 261 billion tons of coal in its proved coal reserves. These are the world’s largest coal reserves and over 27 percent of the world’s proved coal reserves. 6
• The United States produces nearly 1.1 billion short tons of coal a year, making it the world’s second largest coal producer.7 China produces over 3.5 billion short tons a year. 7
• The United States has 486 billion tons of coal in its demonstrated reserve base, enough domestic coal to use for the next 485 years at current rates of consumption. These estimates do not include Alaska’s coal resources, which according to government estimates, are larger than those in the lower 48 states. 8
• The federal government leases less than 3 percent of federal lands for oil and natural gas production—2.2 percent of federal offshore areas9 and less than 5.4 percent of federal onshore lands. 10
• The world could hold more than 700 quadrillion (700,000 trillion) cubic feet of methane hydrates—more energy than all other fossil fuels combined. 11
Renewables and Nuclear
• In 2011, wind power produced 1.2 percent of the energy used in the United States. 12
• In 2011, solar power produced 0.1 percent of the energy used in the United States. 13
• Total federal subsidies in fiscal year 2007 were $24.34 per megawatt hour for solar-generated electricity and $23.37 per megawatt hour for wind, compared with $1.59 for nuclear, $0.67 for hydroelectric power, $0.44 for conventional coal, and $0.25 for natural gas and petroleum liquids. 14 In fiscal year 2010, the subsidies were even higher. For solar power, they were $775.64 per megawatt hour, for wind $56.29, for nuclear $3.14, for hydroelectric power $0.82, for coal $0.64 and for natural gas and petroleum liquids $0.64. 15

• In 2011, hydroelectric power contributed 3.3 percent of the energy used in the United States and 7.9 percent of the electricity. 16
• Today, there are 104 nuclear reactors in the United States and construction began for all of these reactors prior to 1974. 17
Energy Efficiency and Environmental Indicators
• Since 1970, the six so-called “criteria pollutants” have declined by 63 percent, even though the generation of electricity from coal-fired plants has increased by over 180 percent, gross domestic product has increased by 204 percent, energy consumption has increased by 40 percent, and vehicle miles traveled have increased by 168 percent. 18

• Energy use per person in the United States fell 12 percent between 1979 and 2010 from 359 million BTUs to 317 million BTUs per person. 19
• Energy intensity—energy consumption per dollar of GDP—fell by 52 percent between 1973 and 2011. 20
• In 2010, China was responsible for 24 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In comparison, the United States, the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, emitted 17 percent of the global total.
• China’s CO2 emissions increased by 167 percent between 1999 and 2009, while CO2 emissions from the United States decreased by 4.4 percent over the same 10-year period. 21
_MasterResource

The full PDF report can be downloaded here

OPEC Oil Production Rises; Oil Demand Suffering

OPEC oil production rises to a 3 year high

Production by Opec members rose by 1 per cent on the month to reach an average pumping volume of 31.405 million barrels per day (bpd), according to a Bloomberg survey of oil companies, producers and analysts.

Growth was driven by Saudi Arabia, resurgent Libyan output and rising Iraqi capacity, offsetting a decline in Iranian production, which slumped to a 20-year low.

Oil prices hit by economic gloom

Official data Monday showed Spain had tipped back into recession -- another dose of grim news for a cash-strapped economy that has been hobbled by rising sovereign debt, soaring unemployment and deeply troubled banks.

"Crude oil prices started the week in negative territory, following fairly disappointing economic data from Spain that confirmed that the Spanish economy is sliding into recession," said Sucden broker analyst Myrto Sokou.

"The data weighed on crude oil prices, confirming a slowdown in oil demand, especially from the European countries due to the lack of economic development."

Europe is being pommeled by problems with debt, demographic decline, and a growing sense of "only child" entitlement.

Meanwhile, nations from Asia to the Persian Gulf are being forced to re-evaluate unsustainable oil subsidies, which keep prices artificially low and demand artificially high from China to Dubai to Mexico to Venezuela.

Inflated oil prices are spurring innovation and substitution. Industrial societies do not run on oil -- they run on abundant energy that is easily usable. Oil is one form of energy that has qualified for a number of decades. If the price of oil enters bubble territory, free societies will find ways to substitute other forms of energy. Only fools fixate on outer appearances, instead of the deeper meanings and substance beneath.

Some analysts and journalists are even suggesting ways that one might profit from the era of artificially inflated oil costs.

But be careful. When prices are being manipulated by powerful players-behind-the-curtains, movements in prices can be unexpectedly rapid and potentially devastating.

Large new deposits of oil & gas are waiting to be found off the coasts of China, Africa, South America, and North America. Should the shackles ever be removed from the international oilcos by the energy starvationists of the west, and and corrupt nationalists of OPEC and the third world, significant downward pressure on global oil prices would result.

BioSyn Resources Implementing Scalable Gas to Liquids GTL

Gas to liquids -- GTL -- is potentially one of the most profitable energy technologies at this time. A single GTL plant in Qatar -- the Shell Pearl GTL plant -- is expected to reap roughly $6 billion per year in profits. But a handful of companies are developing smaller, more scalable GTL installations, suitable for placing offshore or at stranded gas reserves. BioSyn Resources has recently announced its intention to jump into the scalable GTL race:

After reaching a conclusion that the likelihood of the huge price differential between natural gas and crude oil will continue for the long term, BioSyn decided to implement ahead of schedule the 4th phase of its integrated biomass-centric feedstock-flexible biorefinery project, starting with the construction of a 300-bpd fourth generation gas-to-liquids demonstration plant. The demonstration plant will provide BioSyn and its process licensors, engineering and EPC contractors with techno-economic data and operational experience to proceed with full scale commercial facilities.

A fourth generation Fischer-Tropsch technology features a much smaller plant footprint and significantly lower economies of scale. It also features a product slate characterized by more than 95% C5-C18 fraction of more than 50% isoparaffinic structure and absence of oxygenates. This obviates the need for high CAPEX hydrocracking facility that is required in 3rd generation GTL plants the Fischer-Tropsch blocks of which produce largely waxy products.

With the maturation of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies, the vast reserves of natural gas trapped in gas shale formations underlying vast areas of continental United States are now unlocked for long term production. With gas prices hovering south of $15.00 per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE), and crude oil prices hovering north of $100.00 per barrel, the door for technical arbitrage opportunity opened up for the conversion of natural gas to drop-in infrastructure-ready transportation fuels.

Current estimates of national inventory of gas reserves at the end of 2011 stand at about 300 trillion cubic feet (TCF). The estimated U.S. future gas supply for the year ending in 2010 was 2,170 TCF, which is equivalent to about 361 billion BOE. This is more than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia, which was only 262.6 billion barrels at the end of 2011.

“Petroleum based transportation fuels are tethered to highly volatile world prices of crude oil, which we predict will continue to maintain an upward trajectory for the long term. This gives rise to an unusual local phenomenon: the unprecedented widening of the price differential between natural gas and petroleum based transportation fuels,” said Mr. Reloj, BioSyn’s CEO. _Yahoo News

While Al Fin energy analysts do not expect crude oil prices to rise as quickly as many analysts do, a significant gap between natural gas and crude oil prices is likely to continue for several years, due to improving technology in gas production.

BioSyn Resources is one of the many BTL (biomass to liquids) startups which is being forced to face the facts of cheap natural gas, and the advantages of GTL over BTL at this time. In the long run, advanced BTL is a good bet when combined with either GTL or CTL, using gen IV high temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors as an industrial heat source.

But such sophisticated XTL technologies are still a decade or so away. Advanced scalable GTL, on the other hand, is mere years away from profitability. Expect significant profits from a number of scrappy small GTL startups, as the technology improves and shakes out in the marketplace.

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Take a Hard Line on Frivolous Energy and Climate Policy

Apparently the group "Doctors for Disaster Preparedness" is concerned about the humanitarian danger of slashing back on reliable energy supplies in the name of carbon hysteria and green energy starvation. Such policies are beginning to devastate European industry and the European economy, with Australia and the US firmly in the sights of green energy starvationists and carbon hysterics.

Most of the "Doctors for this" and "Doctors for that" groups are trumped up green energy starvationist groups. But the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness appear to be concerned about genuine potential disasters -- chief among which would the a long term loss (or diminution) of reliable energy and fuel supplies to the advanced world. It is unfortunate that much of the leadership of the advanced world does not share similar concerns.

unreliable energy supply is now “the top risk for Germany as a location for business, says Hans Heinrich Driftmann, president of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK). All industrial sectors are threatened. The metal industry is already migrating to countries with cheaper electricity (Spiegel Online 2/24/12). In an attempt to fill the gap created by the post-Fukushima shutdown of eight nuclear power stations, Germany is developing its lignite resources (Impulse 3/6/12). That is “brown coal,” the most carbon-intensive fuel known (Lawson, op. cit.). It also imports large amounts of power generated at nuclear stations in France and the Czech Republic, and had to fire up an old oil-fired plant in Graz, Austria, when solar panels were generating virtually no energy last December (Spiegel Online 1/18/12).

Because of its “green” policies, the UK faces an energy shortfall by 2015 if not before. In a cold winter, factories would be closing, and elderly people swathing themselves in blankets (Alex Brummer, Daily Mail 3/27/12). The economy as a whole is flat-lined. Business-wrecking energy policy includes a 20% “stealth tax” on the electricity bills of business consumers, which could rise to 70% by 2020. Green policies threaten some 30,000 existing British jobs; there is no net job creation, and the subsidy for “new” jobs averaged £54,000 per worker in 2009-2010 (Conservative Home 9/18/11).

A growing backlash against the £400 million annual subsidies for wind technology is causing many companies to place wind investments on hold (Daily Telegraph 2/27/12, cited by CCNet 2/27/12). Yet a vast expansion of wind power, bankrolled by taxpayers, is required to meet the pledges in the Climate Change Act, in which Britain signs up for emissions cuts by 2050—the only country in the world to do so. Even the site heralded as “the birthplace of democracy in England”—the battlefield on which Oliver Cromwell defeated King Charles I in 1645—is slated for devastation by a wind farm.

“It is unbelievable that one planning inspector can overrule all elements of democracy,” stated MP Heaton-Harris (Sunday Express 1/22/12, CCNet 1/23/12).

In Scotland, mandated wind energy will cost consumers £120 billion by 2020; the same amount of electricity from gas would cost £13 bn. Carbon emissions might drop 2.8% with wind—or they might increase owing to the need for inefficient back-up power. Household energy costs now take an average of 14% of household income, up from 8% in 2005; 900,000 families are now in “energy poverty” (Scotland on Sunday 3/11/12).

Placing the needs of their people above the EU’s carbon allowance, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, and Romania challenged the European Commission’s ceilings on greenhouse gas emissions. In 2009, the European Court of First Instance ruled that the ceilings should be scrapped, but the Commission appealed.

Poland may be “riding to the defense of Europe again” (TWTW 3/10/12, www.sepp.org). In 1683, King Jan Sobieski led a cavalry attack on Ottoman forces that were assaulting Vienna, saving European civilization. On Mar 9, Poland was the sole holdout against the EU demand in “Energy Roadmap 2050” for reducing CO2 emissions to 80%–95% of 1990 levels. Coal is used to generate 90% of Poland’s electricity. _Doctors for Disaster Preparedness

Is Mexico Ready to Emerge from Its Self-Induced Energy Slump?

Mexico's energy production has been steadily falling, despite massive new discoveries of hydrocarbons. In order to develop its assets and allow its people to profit from its natural resources, Mexico must step back from its self-imposed energy isolationism. The curse of oil nationalism has made Mexico corrupt and lazy. The country needs outside investment and expertise in a very bad way.

For the first time in 74 years, Mexico may allow private investment in its oil and gas, the third-largest reserves in Latin America.

...Selling shares in the largest oil supplier to the U.S. will open a Mexican industry experiencing an eighth year of declining output, hurt by faltering investment and lack of technology and experience for the deepest offshore wells. The cash can fund Gulf of Mexico and shale gas production using techniques Brazil and the U.S. employed to revolutionize their energy markets.

“The taboo has been broken” on private investment, Pemex board member Hector Moreira said in an interview. “People talking about private stakes -- it’s a first step. And it’s a step that’s not prompting a negative reaction from the public.”

...Energy Minister Jordy Herrera said last month that the company’s budget to tackle all the challenges is “notoriously insufficient.” Pemex needs to change the law to get more funds and create a “model similar to Petrobras (PBR) (PBR) or whatever we decide,” he said, referring to the state-backed oil company in Brazil.

While Pemex wanted to invest more than $30 billion this year, the federal government cut its plans to about $23 billion, and even those funds are not available at the speed or with the flexibility that the company requires. Pemex paid almost 60 percent of its revenue in taxes, cash used to finance a third of the nation’s public budget. _BusinessWeek

Mexico's corrupt and inept national energy system has prohibited outside investment for almost 75 years. And Mexico has paid the price in lost opportunity and in the national laziness that infests all governments and societies that become overly dependent upon a nationalised industry such as oil.

Shell is Pushing the GTL Envelope for Massive Profits

When the price of a commodity drops in the middle of a production glut, the smart money will find a way to turn the cheap commodity into something more valuable. That is what Shell is doing globally, with natural gas.

Shell is moving ahead with plans to build plants in the U.S. that could convert dirt cheap natural gas into high-valued diesel fuel, hoping to profit from an almost tenfold mark-up in prices that many analysts say is the biggest prize in the world of energy today.

With U.S. natural gas trading at the equivalent of $12 per barrel of oil, and crude oil at over $100 a barrel, the opportunity for profit is huge, but not without its risks. Building a gas-to-liquids facility would cost billions of dollars and take most of this decade to complete. The U.S. is already littered with money-losing long-term investments that fell victim to unexpected shifts in natural gas supply and demand.

Shell is the world’s leading operator of gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities, which chemically convert natural gas into premium diesel, lubricants and chemical feedstocks. It operates the world’s largest GTL plant in Qatar and a smaller one in Malaysia.

The profitability of these GTL plants was a major contributor to Shell’s consensus-beating first quarter profits of $7.28 billion.

Similar plants in the U.S. could be potentially very profitable, said Shell’s Chief Financial Officer, Simon Henry. The company is looking at sites in Louisiana and Texas as the possible location for a plant producing at least 70,000 barrels a day of liquids from natural gas. _WSJ

Natural gas prices will not always be this low, but the huge price gap between gas and liquid fuels is likely to remain for at least a decade, and probably longer. The smart money will find a way to take all that cheap gas and turn it into valuable liquid chemicals, polymers, fuels, lubricants, and other materials.

Canadian Oil & Gas Coming On Strong

Canada's growing oil & gas production is driving the economy. The recent elections in Alberta reflect the oil sands' growing importance.

Image via NBF


The slideshare presentation below provides an extended look at near to intermediate term developments in Canada's oil & gas industry.

Canadian Oil and Gas Industry Outlook – Opportunities & Challenges

View more presentations from Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP)

h/t Brian Wang


Canada and Australia are developing into two powerhouse energy and mineral exporting nations of the Anglosphere. Being blessed with abundant resources, the rule of law, ample human capital, and relative proximity to large markets, these two countries should have long and prosperous futures -- at least to the mid-century mark. This is true as long as they can avoid ruinous policies of carbon hysteria and energy starvation, and as long as they can develop and maintain sound immigration policies.

Vast Energy Bonanza Challenges Global Geopolitical Status Quo

The global shale boom is working its way into more and more parts of the world. Very few analysts have given voice to the true seismic threat of the shale revolution -- the earth-shaking effect it will have on global energy markets and the global geopolitical infrastructure once it truly kicks into gear.

Russia...will probably be forced into serious political and economic reforms or face decline. Its government spending is too high, its non-hydrocarbon economy too anemic, and now its oil and gas sectors under challenge.

...We already know, for example, that the heft of the U.S. shale gas boom has challenged Russia's natural gas grip on Europe. Saudi Arabia also fears shale gas, whose abundance could ultimately contribute to the erosion of U.S. oil demand, as Chris Weafer said last week on this blog (also see remarks below by oil scholar Philip Verleger.).

Saudi has valid reasons to worry, as it seems almost-certain that the fresh big oil finds on other continents will whittle away at the centrality of the mighty nations of OPEC, the bain of Western economies for 35 years. OPEC seems far less likely to call the shots in global oil and, according to Citigroup and other analysts, the per-barrel price its members earn could be much-reduced. The wild card will be demand, meaning China's future oil appetite, and the continued progress of energy efficiency. _FP

Not only Russia and KSA have reason to worry. All the corrupt, inefficient oil dictatorships who have come to rely on inflated oil bubble prices to power their economies are going to come under threat.

From the Persian Gulf to Venezuela to the Russian steppe to darkest Africa, oil dictatorships will begin to see their iron-clad grip on customers begin to loosen, one by one, as more and more countries develop their native shale resources, and some of them begin to export product on their own.

Global Oil Production Hits Yet Another New Peak

Peak oil prognosticators, including Ken Deffeyes and the late Matt Simmons and King Hubbert, continue running up a long string of failed predictions for the global peak in oil production. It is almost as if they all suffered from severe conceptual deficits in their thought processes.....

Source

...the peak oil theorists, if not wrong in the long term, seem to have been premature in warning that the summit for production was upon us. In 2009, for instance, one forecast for global oil production via The Oil Drum warned that output was set to fall by more than two million barrels a year. A decade ago, geologist Ken Deffeyes’ widely read book Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage opened by stating that “global oil production will probably reach a peak sometime during this decade.” The 2009 edition of the book makes the same forecast.

Deffeyes is hardly alone in warning that the end is near for raising global oil production, as a sampling of the many book titles in recent years on the peak oil subject remind: The Party’s Over, The End of Oil, and Profit from the Peak, for instance.

There is a peak out there somewhere, of course. Production for every commodity with a finite supply inevitably reaches a crest. The question, of course, is when? Estimating the date of the apex is problematic for several reasons. Technology, for instance, can change the analysis. If you can make cars more energy efficient, that’s the equivalent of finding more oil, all else equal. That leaves us with the troublesome task of predicting what technology will bring in terms of energy savings in the years ahead. _WallStreetPit

Source
Meanwhile, China is ramping up shale exploration and technology development, in preparation for the coming boom in Chinese shale oil & gas, and GTL, along with combined GTL and CTL.

Argentina is likewise gearing up to take advantage of the unconventional hydrocarbon bonanza.

The massive global supplies of unconventional hydrocarbons are waiting only for improved technologies of catalytic conversion to high quality chemicals, fuels, polymers, etc. Perhaps the coming boom in space mining of platinum and other precious metals will have a secondary effect on the eventual boom in GTL, CTL, BTL, KTL, BitTL, GHTL, and other XTL technologies? Particularly with the development of gen IV high temperature gas cooled modular nuclear reactors, which will send the myth of EROEI to the dustbin of history.

Shale Energy: We Have Barely Scraped the Surface

The energy world is changing in ways that were not predicted just a few short years ago. Peak oil and peak oilers were sitting on the top of the world just two years ago. Since then, the real world has been less and less kind to them.

More than 50 years ago energy experts began speaking of “peak oil” – the idea that the world was passing the point of maximum production and that supplies would decline. Today, shale calls that assumption into question. In the US new extraction techniques have transformed gas production, opening reserves that some estimate will last 100 years. Liquid-rich shales – ones that also contain oil – have enabled the US significantly to cut its dependence on crude imports.

Shale also has the potential to reshape domestic economies. In this year’s State of the Union address. President Barack Obama said experts predicted it would support 600,000 jobs, with more to follow as industries that rely on cheap energy were brought back onshore. Lord Browne, the former chief executive of BP and now a partner at Riverstone – backer of Cuadrilla Resources, a company exploring for shale gas in the UK – is convinced it is a prize worth pursuing.

“Ultimately, shale gas gives us options for the future. It puts our energy supply in our own hands, as well as providing obvious economic benefits. It is clear that shale will be one of the linchpins of global energy supply in the 21st century, alongside nuclear and renewables,” he says.

Shales are the most abundant form of sedimentary rock on earth, serving also as the source rocks for hydrocarbons that migrate into conventional reservoirs. Nigel Smith at the British Geological Survey, a research council, uses the analogy of looking for something to eat in a house. “All the food in the kitchen, the cupboards, the fridge and the freezer – that’s the hydrocarbon source rock kitchen. The conventional hydrocarbons that we have used so far have migrated to the dining room. We are going back into the kitchen to see what is still left in the source rocks or shales.”

The apparent abundance of riches in the “kitchen” is causing a stir around the world. Aside from Argentina, significant reserves have been identified in Australia, South Africa, northern Africa and eastern Europe as well as in the UK and France. After an assessment of the potential in 32 countries the Energy Information Administration, a US federal agency, has estimated shale could increase the world’s technically recoverable gas resources by more than 40 per cent. _FT_via_GWPF

With reserves as huge as those of many countries, not only will they use the resource themselves, they will certainly begin to export the resources to other nations. That phenomenon will shake world energy markets to their foundations. Just imagine: Russia's Gazprom will not only lose some of its best customers in Europe and Asia to their own shale gas resource. Gazprom will also be forced to compete with their former customers, as they turn into exporters themselves!

That is not what Mr. Putin wants to see, just as he is in the middle of plans to "re-build the USSR!"

Is This What Peak Oil Looks Like?

Peak oil theory holds a static view of the world, and its models ignore price effects: lots of oil discoveries and high production mean that prices and profits wane, and incentives for further exploration decline. But ensuing oil shortages then restore these incentives. When incentives exist, the industry will continue to produce and is likely to produce even more. Peak oil theorists also neglect the role of technological advances in oil production as a great multiplier. The history of the oil industry reflects an endless struggle between nature and our knowledge. Progress in technology allows both new discoveries and the increase in recovery rate needed to turn non-recoverable or hypothetical resources into recoverable reserves. _China Dialogue

Forexpro In the real world, oil reserves are not static, but rather respond to changes in prices, technologies, alternative fuels and energies, and new discoveries. Peak oil has shown itself incapable of responding to real world conditions, which makes it more like a religion.

The market has now priced in declining oil prices at least through 2020. If "peak oil" dynamics are still at play, they are nowhere to be found on this futures curve. [see graph above] _Forexpro

Peak oil skunks show their true stripes in their hysterical reactions to the shale oil & gas boom. Instead of being happy that civilised nations are given a temporary respite from high energy costs, these little weasels are hoping that governments will shut down the new forms of energy -- they hope for political peak oil, and increased hardship.

Apocalyptic thinking has become all the rage in peak oil doom / carbon hysteria circles. Clearly the US Obama administration , along with several governments of Europe, have been tainted more than a little by this coliform pollution of the mind.

But no matter how many circles of doom may form around the perimeter, the main thrust of human nature has always been toward profit, growth, and life. These positive drives push technology and exploration forward, and open up new conceptual mindsets which are able to incorporate new forms of energy, fuels, and possibilities into a larger future vision.

Doom is fashionable among the effete elite in the media, politics, faux environmentalism, academia, and the many cults of the apocalypse. But the rest of us have work to do.

Carnival of Nucular Bloggers 101

The 101st Carnival of Nuclear Energy bloggers is being held at ANS Nuclear Cafe (h/t Dan Yurman). Here are some excerpts from the carnival:

• Turkey [woos] China for new reactor

The Turkish government recently signed a $20 billion project with Russia to build nuclear power facilities in Akkuyu, Turkey. Now the Turkish government has set its sights on constructing a nuclear plant in Sinop, Turkey.
The Financial Times recently reported that China is the primary contender for this contract due to its ability to secure financing without requiring guarantees from the Turkish government. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited China last week, confirming reports of the deal when Energy Minister Tanir Yildiz held talks with Chinese authorities. At these meetings, Chinese Energy authority Liu Tienan pledged full financial guarantees for the $20 billion project.

• [WNA projections of a nuclear power century]

This is a review of estimates for a nuclear energy century. It reports 1000 reactors for 2030 would be the high-2030 scenario from the World Nuclear Association (WNA) – Nuclear Century. The WNA lists nuclear generation targets by country.
Idaho Samizdat – Dan Yurman

• Debunking nuclear energy nonsense

Once again it is time to spit on your hands, rub them together, and raise the black flag of contention to respond to deliberate attempts at creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
It will take upwards of three decades to decommission Fukushima. There are many engineering challenges ahead. However, feat mongering is not useful as part of the dialog about the future nuclear energy in Japan or anywhere else.
In California Friends of the Earth is using Gundersen’s report to create fear of the SONGS plant by questioning the design basis of the steam generators. That’s propaganda. It isn’t engineering fact.
ANS Nuclear Cafe – Paul Bowersox

• Nuclear Literacy Project Launches

Suzy Hobbs Baker introduces the Nuclear Literacy Project, a new website and outreach initiative geared toward reaching young, non-technical audiences with information about nuclear energy. The new website is just the beginning… which you can check out at http://www.nuclearliteracy.org/ There are many ways to support Nuclear Literacy.

• Competition heats up for DOE SMR funding

Dan Yurman covers the breaking story of a partnership between Westinghouse and Ameren Missouri to develop and build Small Modular Reactors at Ameren’s Callaway site — and other recent entrants in the race to win $452 million in cost-shared funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for SMR licensing and technical support.
Atomic Insights – Rod Adams

• ExxonMobil is betting that natural gas will NOT remain cheap

Electric utility executives, public utility commissions and energy industry pundits all seem to agree that the ability to extract useful quantities of gas from deep, tight shale gas reservoirs has opened up a 100 year supply of cheap natural gas. Many have publicly stated that abundant supplies of low-priced gas makes nuclear energy irrelevant and hopelessly uncompetitive.
ExxonMobil, one of the most widely respected multinational petroleum companies in the world is betting in the other direction. They are investing heavily in the capability to produce and distribute natural gas. They are not investing tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in natural gas related capital assets because they think gas will remain cheap.
ExxonMobil often places contrarian bets and rewards stockholders because they successfully buy cheap assets when no one else wants them and sells massive quantities of high margin products when everyone else is buying
Atomic Power Review – Will Davis

• Sylcor Westrern Office / Part 1

Will Davis at Atomic Power Review continues on his mission to give nuclear energy its history back by introducing an unusual (to the nuclear energy world) series of historical prose.
Previously announced at APR were four recurring, new historical features; the actual launch occurs now with the first installment covering Sylvania-Corning Nuclear Corporation’s Western Sales Office. Through many original documents both from Sylcor and from the late Jim Vadeboncoeur, Will Davis tells the inside story of the early days of commercial nuclear energy.
Thorium MSR – Rick Maltese

• Book Review “Superfuel” by Author Richard Martin of Wired Magazine

_ANSNuclear Cafe Nuke Carnie 101

Nuclear energy in the US is being unjustly held back by US NRC chairman Jaczko and a cabal of energy starvationist, anti-nuclear senators including Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer. Dan Yurman has more on the latest of the Jaczko follies

The US state of Missouri is joining Westinghouse in the competition for US DOE funding meant to promote the creation of small modular fission reactors.

US energy companies would be best off working together to defeat US President Obama's re-election bid in November, as well as working to eliminate other energy starvationist politicians who are ensconced within the fossil bureaucracies and divisions of the monstrously overgrown US government.

IBM and its New 800 Km Range Lithium-Air Battery

Electric vehicles are cursed by ludicrously expensive, short-range batteries, which sour new owners on the technology all too quickly. The EV and hybrid automobile industries cannot survive for long, if they cannot even attract old owners back for new designs and models.

But what if a company -- perhaps IBM -- were to invent and produce a reasonably priced battery that provided a 500 mile range per charge? How would that change the equation?

Most fully charged lithium ion car batteries today will take an electric vehicle only 160 kilometers before petering out. (Nissan says its all-electric Leaf has a range of about 175 kilometers.) Plug-in electric vehicles such as the Chevy Volt have an even more limited range of up to 80 kilometers before its gas-powered motor must kick in.

...Researchers predict a new type of lithium battery under development could give an electric car enough juice to travel a whopping 800 kilometers before it needs to be plugged in again—about 10 times the energy that today's lithium ion batteries supply. It is a tantalizing prospect—a lighter, longer-lasting, air-breathing power source for the next generation of vehicles—if only someone could build a working model. Several roadblocks stand between these lithium–air batteries and the open road, however, primarily in finding electrodes and electrolytes that are stable enough for rechargeable battery chemistry.

IBM plans to take lithium–air batteries out of neutral by building a working prototype by the end of next year. The company announced Friday it has stepped up development efforts by adding two Japanese technology firms—chemical manufacturer Asahi Kasei Corp. and electrolyte maker Central Glass—to the IBM Battery 500 Project, a coalition IBM established in 2009 to accelerate the switch from gas to electric-powered vehicles among carmakers and their customers.

...the lithium–air batteries might be ready for production by 2020 at the earliest, "if we don't find any show-stopping technology along the way." [Winfried Wilcke] adds: "The only thing I'm certain of is that it won't happen this decade." _SciAm

Well, it was a thought. But it is just as important to understand development timeframes when they are stretched out, as when they are compressed or accelerated.

EVs and hybrids are not magic carpets, sent from an alternate Persia to rescue us from hydrocarbon fueled vehicles. It takes time to overturn infrastructures based upon $trillions of investment, development, and production base.

Fortunately, there are many decades worth of oil remaining, and centuries worth of liquid fuels from CTL, GTL, BTL, KTL, and GHTL [gas hydrates to liquids]. If you throw in the cheap and abundant industrial process heat from new generations of safer, cleaner, scalable nuclear reactors, we are not likely to run out of liquid fuels for combustion engines for a very long time.

Peak oil religionists are good at sitting around in circles, droning their liturgical repeats, centered upon a dark and constricting future. The rest of us have work to do.

New Biofuel King? Bio-Butanol Replacing More Bio-Ethanol Plants

Back in 2010, the New York Times profiled 3 companies that were moving to retrofit bioethanol plants, converting them to produce a much superior biofuel -- bio-butanol. Now in 2012, the three firms -- Cobalt Technologies, Gevo, and Butamax (a joint venture of BP and DuPont) -- are pressing ahead with their plans to make bio-butanol the new king of the biofuels.

Cobalt Technologies recently announced a deal between the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) and the company Albemarle to produce a jet fuel from biobutanol.

...Butanol does hold some advantages over other alternative fuels. It’s heavier than traditional ethanol and more similar to gasoline, making it over 30 percent more efficient than ethanol. California-based Cobalt Technologies has claimed that by producing the bio n-butanol with non-food feedstocks it is making some of the cheapest and most efficient biofuel on the market. 

 And because biobutanol doesn’t mix well with water—something ethanol does do—the product can be interchanged very easily with traditional oil products in pipelines and refineries, Jack Huttner, executive vice president for corporate development of Gevo, another biobutanol company, told ClimateWire in January 2010.

...Cobalt has decided to forego food crops in production and instead uses cellulosic feedstock from wood waste. _TGDaily

Gevo continues retrofitting corn ethanol plants to biobutanol plants. But Gevo is aiming first for the lucrative chemicals market, with its butanol product. By generating early profits in this way, Gevo is hoping to improve and scale its technology so as to compete head to head with petro-fuels in just a few years.

Butamax -- the joint venture of BP and DuPont -- may be ready to break out of the pack soon. The venture has entered into a collaboration with Fagen -- a heavyweight biofuels engineering firm -- to move rapidly into the ethanol to butanol retrofit game.

Butamax Advanced Biofuels, LLC, a joint venture between BP and DuPont, has entered into collaboration with Fagen, Inc. for the introduction of commercial biobutanol production using Butamax technology.

Fagen is an experienced biofuels engineering, procurement and construction contractor, having built more ethanol capacity than any other company. It has built more than 85 ethanol plants totaling approximately 6 billion gallons of annual production.

...The company announced last December the formation of the Early Adopters Group (EAG), a consortium of biofuel production companies interested in becoming early adopters of Butamax biobutanol technology. In addition, piloting work continues at the Butamax Technology Demonstration facility as the company prepares for market entry with commercial production in 2014. _GCC

It is likely that Butamax will enter the chemicals market prior to the fuels market, for economic reasons, and due to its connection to DuPont. Bio-butanol is also likely to be used as a fuel additive for both diesel and gasoline, before it is forced to compete as a drop-in replacement for gasoline.